Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
A head mounted display (HMD) unit is a display device, worn on a user's head, which can display information via images in front of one eye (monocular HMD unit) or each eye (binocular HMD unit) of the user. HMD units have been used for a wide range of applications.
HMD units, also referred to as wearable systems, can integrate various elements, such as miniaturized computers, input devices, sensors, detectors, image displays, wireless communication devices as well as image and audio processors, into a device that can be worn by a user. Such devices provide a mobile and lightweight solution to communicating, computing and interacting with one's environment. With the advance of technologies associated with wearable systems and miniaturized optical elements, it has become possible to consider wearable compact optical displays that augment the wearer's experience of the real world.
By placing an image display unit close to the user's eye(s), an artificial image can be made to overlay the wearer's view of the real world. The wearable systems incorporating these image display units also referred to as “near-eye see-through displays”, or “heads-up displays” (HUDs). Depending upon the size of the display unit and the distance to the wearer's eye, the artificial image may fill or nearly fill the user's field of view.